Really? Because when I look up, there is a lot more space between stars than actual stars.
Angular distance is the only measurement that makes sense in this situation. It is the amount of the sky that an object takes up. The sun and moon are each about 1 degree, which means if you stacked 360 of them side to side, they would make a circle around the sky.
An arc minute is 1/60th of a degree, and an arc second is 1/60th of an arc minute. Stars angular distance is usually measured in arc seconds.
That's because you live in the city, if you lived in the country, you'd see a lot more stars.
http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000ALa2zdSi6m0/fit=1000x750/Farm-Country-Night-Sky.jpg
I'm not talking about there being too little space in between the stars, so much as we shouldn't be able to see any stars at all.
Forget about the relationship between stars for a moment, take any individual star, if a star represents a pixel of light, it ought to be surrounded by millions of pixels of darkness, because that's how much empty space supposedly surrounds it.
The human eye can't detect a pixel of light in the midst of that much darkness, it's too small.
Take the paint program on the computer, zoom in, paint a pixel, the color/brightness of the pixel doesn't matter, then zoom out, now color all the other pixels black, you won't be able to see the pixel of color.
The human eye can't detect a pixel of light surrounded by thousands, millions of pixels of darkness.
What I'm saying is stars should be too far and relatively small for us to see them from world earth.
You say that "if a star represents a pixel of light". A pixel is just the smallest size that can be shown on the photo, and that photo has fewer than 1 million, so each star in the photo cannot be surrounded by millions of pixels. That is a limitation of the photo and nothing to do with the size of the stars.
The typical resolution of the naked eye is roughly one minute of arc (1').
Anything smaller than this might be seen, but will just look like a point.
The angular sizes of even largest stars (to us) is far less than one second of arc (1"), eg:
Betelgeuse 0.05″
Alpha Centauri A 0.007″
Canopus 0.006″
Sirius 0.006″
We can see objects this small if they are bright enough, but if there are two closer together than one minute of arc (1' or 1/60 th of a degree) they will look like one object.
Many of the "stars" that we see are "binaries" (two stars orbiting each other).
When we see the stars the apparent size is further increased by the atmosphere.
Okay, this is the only significant challenge I've received from anyone here.
You're saying the atmosphere blurs starlight, making them appear bigger relative to the space surrounding them than they actually are.
A few things.
One, I'm not sure starlight would be expanded by our atmosphere at all, perhaps it would be contracted.
Two, the atmosphere would also dim starlight as much as it expands it, if it expands it.
Three, we don't really know if this effect can compensate for their lack of relative size, how much does light get expanded while traveling through our atmosphere?
It would have to expand many, many times.
Four, since there's more atmosphere for starlight to travel through when they're near the horizon than overhead, stars should appear many, many times bigger at the horizon.
Five, does that mean objects like mountains and skyscrapers when viewed from miles away appear many, many times larger relative to the space surrounding them they actually are?
Six, that would mean the sun, moon and stars ought to appear many, many times smaller when viewed by Nasa from outer space.
Since I don't believe this is the case, that's a big problem for you.
I doubt your starlight being blurred and scattered by our atmosphere hypothesis, if that's what happens at all, can compensate for their relative smallness, relative to the space that surrounds them.
If they're really dozens, thousands, millions of lightyears apart, than the space surrounding them is so enormous, they would be but a pixel or several pixels of light, in an ocean, a sea of darkness, they would be imperceptible, which means, if I'm right, space is a lot relatively smaller than they're letting on, and Science, in addition to being metaphysically materialist in its thinking, is also nihilistic, attempting to expand nothingness/reduce somethingness for whatever purpose. This seems to be the picture of the cosmos they want to paint, that there's not a heck of a lot out there, and what is out there is virtually insurmountable.
As for twinkling, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, that it's illusory, a byproduct of something else?
And is how they change color also a hallucination?
Or is that what they're really doing, and what you're saying a misrepresentation of them?
How is this twinkling effect being produced?
Why don't all the stars twinkle then?